Rutgers Athletic Director Pat Hobbs walks off the field with his Scarlet Kight players after they lost to Minnesota, 42-7, before an announced Homecoming crowd of 26,429 on Saturday October 19, 2019 in Piscataway. Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media

Put aside the jaw-dropping nugget of a Big Ten athletic director calling a reporter inquiring about abuse allegations on one of his teams “f---ing scum,” just for a moment. I know this isn’t easy, and if the university isn’t soon reviewing this conduct unbecoming of Patrick Hobbs’ high-profile leadership position, we’ll have another only-at-Rutgers moment to throw on the pile.

But let’s separate the ugly quote from the intent. Hobbs is not only responding to allegations of what amounts to intimidation and bullying with more intimidation and bullying. He is blaming the messenger, too. That should be stunning given the seriousness of what seven softball players have told NJ Advance Media about the toxic climate within that program, but this being Rutgers, it is standard operating procedure.

Take a quick stroll through this athletic department’s scandal-littered history:

What happened when Mike Rice was caught hurling basketballs and homophobic slurs at his players? The first finger was pointed behind the scenes at Eric Murdock, the director of player development who collected the outrageous practice clips and later gave them to ESPN.

What happened when Julie Hermann, days after she was hired as AD, was found to have a history of mental abuse and cruelty in a previous coaching job? The university counsel raced to her defense to insist the charges of a dozen former volleyball players at Tennessee “lacked any indicia of reliability.”

What happened when swimming coach Petra Martin faced bullying allegations two years ago? Hobbs insisted that the athletic department had investigated and cleared Martin of any wrongdoing -- until she was fired just days before the season was to begin.

That’s the pattern here, and it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. Rutgers is never, ever wrong until the satellite trucks show up on campus and the walls cave in on everyone involved. This is an institution of higher learning that never learns, so of course the first reaction from Hobbs and softball coach Kristen Butler is to insist that everything that happened in this latest debacle was totally fine.

Here’s the problem with that: If Rutgers wants you to believe that it handled these allegations in the softball program properly, you must believe that the sources of those allegations -- seven athletes and five parents -- are liars.

You have to dismiss quotes like this ...

“I could not sleep,” one of the softball players said. “I could barely eat. It was at the point where I was just afraid to get out of bed in the morning because I was afraid to have to wake up and actually deal with softball and conditioning and the coach that day. I was terrified out of my mind.”

You have to shrug off allegations like this ...

“I debated just falling down and hitting a glass ledge (and intentionally hurting myself) just to be able to stop,” one of the players said. “It got to that point. Because I knew if I just fell, they were going to tell me to get back up and go again. So I knew if I needed to stop, they weren’t going to believe me.”

You have to believe that the players made up the very specific and downright disgusting quote, attributed to volunteer assistant coach Marcus Smith -- who also happens to be Butler’s husband -- that a team bus smelled like “period blood.” Does that sound like a comment that a group of young women pulled out of thin air?

Smith shouldn’t have been around this team at all. Rutgers said that it did a background check on the former coach at Owens Community College. Smith was suspended during an investigation by the Toledo college after 14 claims of inappropriate behavior, including wondering aloud if a player was a lesbian, intimidating players, revealing medical information about players and telling them “I do not need to respect you.”

Owens mostly cleared Smith -- and Rutgers, in its official response to questions about the program, pointed out that he went on to win conference coach of the year honors. Yippee.

Still: Rutgers has endured more than its fair share of high-profile abuse scandals. Given that, someone in Piscataway reviewed Smith’s history -- available through a simple Freedom of Information Act request -- and was willing to let him be around student athletes? That’s almost worse than doing no background check at all.

Rutgers did not acknowledge a single mistake in its handling of the latest situation. Time and time again, these softball players said they came to the adults expected to protect them. Time and time again, their cries for help appear to have been ignored as 10 players -- nearly two-thirds of the team’s returning athletes -- fled this program rather than suffer the abuse.

“Competing at a Big Ten level requires a commitment to conditioning,” Butler said in a written response through the athletic department’s publicity office. “The results speak for themselves. Last year we finished sixth in the Big Ten, our best finish ever.”

No, really. This was an actual quote. Butler is celebrating her sixth-place participation ribbon as a parade of former players head for the exits, fearing for their safety as their college dreams were crushed. This is not normal. This is not acceptable.

But this is Rutgers. Another team. Another out-of-control coach. Another group of traumatized athletes. And, most damning of all, another example of university officials failing to heed many warnings and implement necessary safeguards to protect young people.

This is the one athletic department on the planet that should understand the consequences of letting a coach treat his or her players with the care of a rancher herding his livestock. This is the one place that should have a zero tolerance for any coaching behavior that even toes the line toward abusive.

Instead, the Rutgers athletic director has turned his ire toward the “f---ing scum” reporters asking the difficult questions. It should be unfathomable, but given the long history of scandals in Piscataway, it’s sadly predictable.

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